family literacy

Many of us watched this video as the link made the rounds (thank you Maria Moriarty), but in case you missed it or lost the link and need to see it again, here it is.

In this video, Sir Ken Robinson by talks about children at school and how schools can undermine creativity in children. Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says.

He talks about hierarchies in education and which topics are most valued. He talks about how these hierarchies were set up to focus on the creation of industrial workers and how, because the things many people are good at are not valued at school, many people do not see their own brilliance.

He says that creativity is as important as literacy. Well we knew that didn't we? He says something else we know: "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

We know that intelligence is diverse and dynamic.
Sometimes it is nice to hear a guy on the internet say it.
And sometimes it is nice to imagine being in English class with Shakespeare.